Microsoft no longer thinks Linux poses a threat to its desktop Windows business.
Directions on Microsoft's Wes Miller pointed out via Twitter how Microsoft has changed the boilerplate "Competition" section in its last two annual financial filings with the SEC.

You have to experience it firsthand to understand, I think. This backwards counter, like a bad Hollywood bomb detonator, popping up silently behind the active windows so that you don't notice it right away, counting the minutes you have left with your work, second by second. The disabled "Later" button that's laughing at your stressed face as you attempt to finish what you are doing in time, and the enabled "Reboot now" button that's here just to make fun of you a little more. The magical moment, at the end of the 15 minutes, where all applications you were using get brutally killed without a warning or a chance to do something for your unsaved data, in one very rare example of instant responsiveness from this OS. Then, as you wonder if that mail you sent during the last minute was actually sent or not, the frustration of waiting as the machine sluggishly install part of its updates, sluggishly reboots, sluggishly installs some more updates, sometimes reboot again...

I'm not sure how you get it to reboot spontaneously, but mine just pops up and asks me to reboot or suspend. I can tell it to suspend for 4 hours, at which time it just pops back up again with the same dialog.
If you don't like that behavior, you can set Windows Update to not automatically install the updates. And if you don't have admin privileges, well... you always get stuck with somebody else's shitty defaults that way, no matter what OS you use

And I agree with you 100% about Windows Explorer missing an 'up one level' button... somebody should be executed for taking that out. But hey, no self-respecting power user uses Explorer anyway, so... *shrug*